旅の小説家の記録

With little time to write in the lead-up to Christmas, you wouldn’t expect me to have made any progress on the day itself, but there was a little downtime before the main event and I made some progress on Chapter 29 of Tico4. The potential road trip I mentioned before has come into being, so there’ll be some writing done then as well, but don’t be surprised if my progress becomes sporadic after that when I devote the majority of my free time to such pursuits as my newly acquired Zelda Musou, Smash 4 and Fire Emblem: Kakusei. I’m going to be busy. ^_^ Stay tuned.

I’ve just posted the teasers for my Arthurian Cycle and it’s been a while since my last commentary post, so now’s as good a time as any to address the question: Why Arthur? Arthurian legend has been tackled countless times, so what exactly do I think I can bring to the table? Well, it’s not so much a matter of me doing anything particularly newer and better than it is the fact that my work has always been tied to the various myths and legends of the world. Raiding the public domain for ideas isn’t a bad thing, mind you. That’s what it’s there for, a big communal pot of ideas you can freely draw from.

Specifically, the backstory of The Brothers Pendragon was tied to Arthurian legend from the beginning and I steadily began to expand on those ties to the wider Tellus Arc. It eventually reached the point where I wanted to detail this backstory in full. This led me on a grand journey, blending the English, Welsh and French traditions of the Arthurian legend with real-world history and the overarching plot of the Tellus Arc. I’ve only just begun, but there’s a lot to tell and I’m eager to tell it.

Will my own twist on Arthurian legend appeal to everyone? Of course not, but for the people who already like my work and are invested in the lore of my stories, I think it should do well. When I actually start serializing these stories is anyone’s guess, but it’s something to look forward to.

I made a little more progress in Rowland’s Chapter 2 of TTWC3 and jotted down some bits of dialog elsewhere. Maybe I’ll finish Orguz’s section of TTWC2 before the weekend’s out and I switch over. Stay tuned.

While I was able to get by with some minor editing to Rowland’s prologue and Chapter 1 of TTWC3, by his Chapter 2 I had to scrap most of it and rewrite it. The Alliance’s attack on Maximilion is rather different than it was back in the previous version of the story, so I have to account for that. The layout of the city has changed as well, so that has to be factored in as well.

In other news, I should have those new teasers up tomorrow or the day after. Stay tuned.

Waking up around 1530 Tuesday threw me well off my game and I’ve been struggling to recover ground since. It’s been a bit of a mess and I’m under quota, but I’ve done some work on Orguz’s Chapter 5 of TTWC2 and started working through Rowland’s section of TTWC3. New offers for work on top of my current work and the rising tide of activity leading up to Christmas have kept me hopping.

In other news, I watched First Knight last night and that’s inspired me to go forward and post the teasers for my Arthurian Cycle. Look forward to that in the next couple days. Stay tuned.

Well, I missed a couple days. In my defense, I at least did a fair bit of work on the Erdi map Saturday, but as you know, the quota only applies to actual story content. However, going into the new week, I was able to get Orguz’s Chapter 4 of TTWC2 mostly finished and make a little progress on his Chapter 5 as well. The goal is to wrap up his section this week and hopefully make some headway into one of the others. It’d be nice to get TTWC2 wrapped up in the near future so I can move on to TTWC3. Actually, I may start working more on TTWC3 because I’ve barely touched it since starting in on Version 3 of the story. More to come. Stay tuned.

I did some writing on CeleKing2 and am trying to get a rough map of the world drawn up. Speaking of cartography, I really need to make the time to redo the maps for the Tellus Arc stories. I’ve been going on about that for years, but I really need to just sit down and make the time for it. Drawing out by hand is rather painful, but maybe if I use the pen tool in Photoshop or whatever, I can just click out the control points and go from there. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

I was so wrapped up in my work that I didn’t even spare the time to post yesterday. I’ve been continuing my work on CeleKing1, to include a lot of work on the currency system. It’s loosely based on ancient Chinese currency and from there I devised pay charts relevant to the story. This probably doesn’t sound the least bit interesting to you, but these are the lengths I go to for verisimilitude in my stories.

There’s something else I’ve got in the works, but I’m not going to reveal it just yet. When I have a little more material, I’ll probably go forward. Stay tuned.

I finally managed to meet quota working on CeleKing1. I still want to make up for the past three days I came up short. It’s amazing how much characterization has developed in so little time. Honestly, I was still at the point where I didn’t have much more than what you see in the teaser I posted. However, it’s starting to come together now. I’ve done so much in the second and third books already almost entirely based on the compelling person of Yasuko Rodrigues, but now her father Batista is shaping up to be almost as compelling himself. Hopefully my attachment to these characters translates to you, the readers. Stay tuned.